Hello,

I’m Awa-Moon Barnett, and I’m raising $250,000 to open a Black trans-owned bookshop and community education center in the Hudson Valley! With 15 years of experience in art, education, and community organizing, I’m responding to the urgent need for a space to resist systemic injustice, foster learning, and dream up a better future.

In October 2024, I completed a transformative two-year, 30,000-mile motorcycle journey across the U.S. Along the way, I connected with revolutionary elders, community caretakers, and small businesses sustaining grassroots organizing. Their stories and resilience inspired me to create a multigenerational space for healing, learning, and imagining a future rooted in compassion, love and justice.

Our education system is failing—schools are defunded, curriculums are whitewashed, and inequities deepen daily. We need a space where learning is celebrated, not banned, and where all people, regardless of race, gender, or background, feel valued and free.

This bookshop will be a haven for collective growth: hosting literary salons, writing workshops, peer-led groups, protest prep and mutual-aid fundraisers. It will prioritize disability justice, honor Indigenous knowledge, nurture the youth, support working-class movements and uplift Black, trans, and queer voices.

Can you help make this dream a reality? Together, we can build a space where community thrives, history is honored, and the future is imagined anew.

About Me (Awa-Moon Barnett):

I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley. I'm a graduate of Rondout Valley High School, CUNY Brooklyn College, CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies and the University of Delaware. In the past 5 years, I've published several articles on the Black Power and Civil Rights movement, including being a contributing author to A People's Guide to New York City (University of California Press, 2021). On my better days, I can be found riding my motorcycle, making films or support youth in their art practice!

Black Trans-Owned Bookshop & Political Education Center in the Hudson Valley

Team Members